


Mad-Hatched Plans

by Mirradin



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Gods, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Reluctant Antagonist, Rescue, Underworld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 19:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20296666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirradin/pseuds/Mirradin
Summary: Karkat Vantas is dead, done, and dusted. Terezi Pyrope thinks that this is unacceptable, and embarks on a mission to rescue her matesprit from the underworld.Unfortunately, the god of the dead may have other ideas.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cricket_aria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/gifts).

Karkat never  _ intended  _ to die, but it’s not like it came as a surprise when he did. Seriously, he spent his whole life hiding from the drones, it was pretty much inevitable that he was going to take a culling fork through the chest sooner or later. At least Terezi wasn’t there for it — he’s glad for that, he  _ is;  _ she would’ve tried to do something, as if there’s anything anyone can do against a drone, and they’d both have walked down the long tunnel hand in ghostly hand. This way, she can move on. Get over him. She can fill her flushed quadrant with someone who won’t get her culled for mixing slurry with a mutant, and he doesn’t have to spend the rest of his existence feeling guilty for getting her killed -- because, shocker, it turns out that  _ dying  _ doesn’t actually mean you  _ end _ .

Okay, so the afterlife is a raving shithole, because of fucking course it is, the universe couldn’t possibly throw him a bone here. But it’s a shithole none of his friends are stuck in with him, so Karkat is going to breathe deep and get the fuck on with it. It’s not like he’s swimming in alternatives.

And right now, that means he’s keeping his head down so the lord of the fuckdamned afterlife doesn’t take an interest in him. Fuck knows why there’s a god of the dead, whatever that is, or what it does, or why he seems to think mutants are interesting, but as long as he makes himself boring--

“Karkat!”

Karkat nearly knocks another ghost over spinning around. Nobody here knows his name. His friends are all alive and will keep being alive if he has to claw his way back up to make sure of it, so  _ nobody here knows his fucking name _ \--

Terezi’s grinning at him from the shadow of a pillar.

Oh.

But -- she was safe. She was meant to be safe, he -- she -- 

Fuck not making a scene. Karkat needs to get to her  _ now _ . Fortunately this area’s not too crowded.

“What the fuck,” he hisses, stepping into the space behind the pillar and clutching at her arms. “What the fuck, how did you manage to get yourself killed  _ already _ , I thought you were way more fucking competent...than...that…”

“You are making a gravely erroneous assumption,” Terezi tells him.

...she’s not dead.

Her body is warm. Her  _ breath _ is warm. He can feel her pulse under his palms, her heart pumping blood through her veins. She’s so full of life she almost radiates it.

“You’re not dead,” Karkat manages. “You -- what the fuck are you doing  _ here _ ?”

“I have resources.” She grabs his shirt and pulls him close. “Karkat, did you really think I was going to let you die and  _ leave  _ you?”

“Given that there is literally no way to do anything else, yes, I kind of did!”

“Not quite. I found a loophole.”

“A loophole for  _ being dead? _ ”

“ _ Yes _ .” She touches his face. “And we have to hurry. Come on.”

Karkat’s not going to argue -- or at least, he’s not going to make them stick around to argue. If Terezi thinks they need to be moving she’s probably right. They hug the wall as she leads him out of the hall, back towards the entrance arch where the tunnels that the newly-dead come down merge into one massive atrium.

“This isn’t going to work,” Karkat says quietly as they get closer. “Those tunnels are one way. You can’t go back up them, believe me, plenty of people have fucking tried.”

“The dead can’t,” Terezi says shortly. “The living can.”

How does she even know that? “...okay, so  _ you  _ can, but I can’t --”

“You can if you’re with me. Karkat, just  _ trust me, _ will you?”

He’s a mutant; trust is lethal _ \--  _ but he’s already dead. He’s culled and dead and Terezi still came to get him, impossibly. “Of course I trust you.”

He squeezes her hand. Stops arguing.

They make it within twenty paces of the arch before the god comes down to bar the way, all wings and talons and empty, burning eyes.


	2. Showtime

The god has a respiteblock.

It...Karkat thinks it’s a respiteblock, anyway. There’s no recuperacoon, but there’s something that might be a pile, if a pile was built out of massive branches and lined with strips of fabric. It’s definitely not a troll in any sense of the term, so maybe it doesn’t need a recuperacoon to sleep, if it even sleeps at all. Karkat doesn’t know shit about gods, okay, he’s willing to be accommodating here. Maybe this isn’t even a respite block at all. It feels more private than anywhere else in the underworld, with shelves high above them cluttered with things that might be personal treasures, but it could just be...a personal space, somewhere to chill out in. Yeah.

Oh fuck that’s not reassuring at all.

They have got to be in trouble, here. Terezi’s here and she’s  _ alive _ , even Karkat can tell that that goes against this place’s weird-ass rules, and she was going to _ take him with her _ . Yeah, new ghosts and some older ones try to get back up the tunnels all the time and there’s no penalty, but Karkat thinks the consequences might be a little worse for an escape attempt that had a chance in hell of actually  _ working.  _ And there are going to be consequences, there have to be; he’s never seen the god take direct, decisive action like this, and going by the way the rest of the dead reacted, that’s not just because he’s a newbie.

They are both in deep, deep shit, and yet instead of being dragged down to some official torture chamber to have their skin ceremonially flayed off, they’ve been dumped in the god’s personal, private block.

That’s...there’s really only one way to interpret that.

He makes himself look at Terezi. She’s perched beside him on one of the boughs supporting the pile, her swordcane laid across her knees. If he couldn’t see her hands trembling, he’d think she was perfectly calm.

“Sorry I dragged you into this,” he says. His throat feels rough.

Terezi shakes her head. “You didn’t drag me into anything.”

“If I hadn’t gotten myself culled in the most obvious way imaginable --”

“Don’t you  _ dare _ ,” Terezi hisses. Her nostrils flare. “Do  _ not  _ apologise for dying, Karkat, or I may have to do something drastic.”

“More drastic than breaking into the underworld?”

“Yes!” Terezi snaps. “And I’m not sure how I could do anything more drastic than that, so  _ don’t _ .”

Despite everything, Karkat feels the corner of his mouth twitching up. “Oh, well, anything to keep you from having to strain your imagination.”

“Shut up.” She leans in, quicks as a snake, and licks his cheek. “Bluh. Ashy.”

“...are you saying I taste different now I’m dead.”

Terezi nods, scrubbing her mouth with a displeased frown. “Your delicious candy red has been corrupted! It’s very unpleasant.”

“Are you  _ complaining that I taste bad because I’m dead. _ Is that seriously a thing you’re doing? What kind of matesprit are you?”

She pats him on the head. “There, there, Karkat, I pity you a great deal despite your newly disappointing flavour!”

“Oh, that’s great, really comforting --”

An echo of claws scraping on stone carries down to them, and the moment of humour withers like marsh-flowers in the desert. Despite himself, Karkat huddles closer to Terezi.

There’s no door in the block. There’s a tunnel near the ceiling, the other end of which opens just under the ceiling of one of the formal halls; the god carried them through it earlier, one in each scaled hand. There are no other entrances. Everything at ground level is bare, smooth rock. They have no way out.

“I don’t suppose your mysterious sources said anything about how to fuck a god,” he asks, too high and too fast.

“Unfortunately they were quite unaccommodating on that front,” Terezi says, her voice uneven. “I guess we’re about to make a new discovery for all trollkind.”

“Go us.” He swallows hard. “Flushed for you.”

Terezi squeezes his hand, and the god flows out of the tunnel overhead.

It’s easy to forget how fucking huge it is, its fiery orange body easily six times as long as Karkat is tall, from its hornless head to the tip of its snakelike tail. It circles the chamber as it descends, massive wings skimming within an inch of the walls with casual arrogance, keeping its arms tucked in neatly. It snatches something from one of the shelves as it passes, almost faster than Karkat can blink, and pours itself down to coil on the other side of the block.

Showtime.

Karkat stands up on legs that feel like water, taking some selfish, shameful comfort in Terezi standing alongside him. The god watches them both, impossible to read. Its face is almost trollish, apart from the eyes. Nothing living or dead or undead has eyes like that. Maybe that’s how you tell it’s a god.

His shirt is the same one he died in, conveniently minus the holes from being stabbed through the thorax. There’s not really any way to make taking it off attractive, so he just grabs the hem and pulls it over his head. Terezi’s having better luck on the strip-tease front with her roleplaying waistcoat, unless the god gets pissed off at how long it’s taking.

“Whoa, there,” the god says, and Karkat flinches. It has a voice like a cawing bird, with the rasp of a blade being drawn hidden in the echoes, and it goes through him somehow despite not really being all that loud. “Gonna need to you to explain what you think’s going on here.”

...something with a voice like that really should not talk that way.

“These are your private quarters,” Karkat bites out. “Literally the only reason to bring us here is because you want to pail us.”

The god...facepalms.

What the fuck.

“Fuck’s sake,” it mutters. It toys with the thing it picked up earlier, which unfolds into...apparently a gigantic pair of sunglasses. 

“Okay,” it says, looking up again. Its unsettling eyes are completely hidden, which Karkat wouldn’t have thought was possible, but it’s a relief nonetheless. “First of all -- actually, first of all could you please put your shirt back on, it’s really awkward having you just standing around topless.”

Karkat yanks his shirt back on, his ears burning. Giant feathery fuckwad is one to talk about  _ awkward _ .

“Thanks,” the god says. “Second of all, I did not bring you here so we could make the beast with two backs, okay, I don’t even know how that would work, there is a major compatibility issue and also I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t even survive it --”

Is the god  _ rambling _ ?

“-- just so we’re all aware, fucking is off the table and the sofa and every other item of furniture you can imagine --”

“And the floor?” Terezi inquires.

“-- that too, alright, it is not happening, no pail, bro. I just needed to get you somewhere out of the way while I handled some stuff and this was literally the only place available.”

Karkat’s palms are clammy. He scrubs them on his trousers. “So what  _ are _ you going to do to us?”

“You were going to go back up the tunnels,” the god says. “Do you know what happens when you get out the other end?”

Terezi frowns. “Karkat would be returned to life.”

“Yeah,” the god agrees. “Problem is, the way that works is by ripping half your life energy out and stuffing it into him. Most people don’t survive that. Or they’re both so weak that they get taken out not long after. Pretty much every couple I’ve seen walk out that arch, they’re both back less than a week later.”

So that’s it. There was never any hope. She came down here for nothing.

“I’ll take that risk,” Terezi says flatly.

“No,” Karkat says. He’s bone-tired suddenly. Funny, because technically he doesn’t have bones any more. But he’s not tired enough to go along with this. He’ll never be that tired. 

“Karkat --”

“ _ No.  _ Don’t -- you can’t just, just  _ waste  _ your life for me, okay, don’t you fucking  _ dare _ \--”

“It’s mine to use how I choose to!”

“You’ll have to drag me all the way up that tunnel, Terezi, because  _ I’m not killing you _ !”

“Could you maybe not have this argument in my bedroom?” the god interrupts. “It’s kind of moot anyway, since I’m not letting either of you out that way. I mean, I could if you insist, but I’d really rather send you back the other way.”

“ _ What _ other way?” Karkat demands.

“The way where I hand you over to my friend who handles the  _ living  _ side of things and she gets you back to the living world without having to rip anyone’s life energy out!”

...huh.

“Why?” Terezi asks pointedly.

The god shrugs. “Why not?”

“You have your own rules to follow.”

“Well. Technically, yeah.” A flash of a smile crosses that outsized face. “Look, if someone wants a person back badly enough that they make it down here to get them...I don’t mind looking the other way a little. Unofficially. Gonna need you to keep it under wraps, though.”

“I think we can manage that,” Karkat says slowly, and gets another flickering smile. “So, how do we find your friend?”

“She’ll be along in a minute.” The god nods up at the tunnel under the ceiling. A green glow is spreading across the rock. “It’s harder for her to get down.”

“It would be fine if you laid this place out sensibly!” someone shouts, a voice full of barks and howls and branches creaking in the wind. The god laughs.

Karkat wraps his arm around Terezi’s side. It’s still hard to believe she’s here. It’s even harder to believe that soon he’s going to be back in the living world with her, breathing and bickering and getting licked at random moments. It’s hard to believe that  _ dying  _ somehow isn’t game over.

It’s unexpected, but it’s not bad. Not bad at all.


End file.
